What you're doing is taking a phrase which has a contextual meaning within copyright law, looking at the individual words of the phrase based on their common usage, and then saying that your new understanding based on the individual words is how copyright law actually works.
If I drop my phone, and then walk into a McDonalds, am I guilty of "breaking and entering"? That's what you're doing here with "public performance"
But that's not (just) what the officer was doing - he was playing music as background to his business operation, which RIAA have definitely sued establishments over[0]. If you're playing music as a soundtrack for your business (in this case, the business of law enforcement), you need a license. Even in a non-business context, if they had a chance to sue you for playing music in public, they would. There just haven't been any prominent/worthwhile cases for them to do so. Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean that isn't what the law allows.
[0]: https://www.frantzward.com/news-blog/june-2017/let-the-music...
It's mind blowing to me that people on Hacker News don't see the absurdity of enforcing copyright law as you are suggesting. This article sums it up well:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071005/094552.shtml
"The repair firm, Kwik-Fit, has a pretty weak response, saying that it's banned personal radios for ten years. Instead, it should be fighting back on the idea that this is a public performance in any way. Otherwise, you get into all sorts of trouble. If you have the windows open in your home and are listening to your legally owned music (or your TV!) and your neighbor can hear it, is that a public performance? What if you live in an apartment building with thin walls? What about when you're driving with the radio on and the windows open? What if you're in your cubicle and the folks in the cubicles around you can hear the music? At which point do we realize how silly this becomes? It's difficult to see how, with a straight face, anyone in the music industry can claim that any of these situations represents harm done to them."
Is that really the world you want? Geez.
> A “public performance” of music is defined in U.S. copyright law to include any music played outside a normal circle of friends and family that occurs in any public place.
This is a quote from a RIAA member explaining their interpretation of public performance.
That literally is the definition of "public performance." He is in public, playing for an audience that is not his private close family and friends.
> By your logic, if someone is playing music in a park or beach, I could start filming them and they'd have to turn it off. Obviously that is ridiculous.
You can't perform publicly without the copyright holder's permission regardless of whether someone is filming you. You have to turn it off anyway, recording or not. I agree that this is a ridiculous part of copyright law and should not exist. I'm leveraging the system we have here to fight oppression.
The fact that he plays it knowing that it is being filmed for broadcast is what adds the "willful" piece to the already "infringement" piece of the public performance.
I'm not making a normative argument here - copyright law in the US is asinine and needs major reform. I'm just combing through this like a determined prosecutor/RIAA goon would, looking for the right charge.